Darkest Dungeon

Let me preface this review by saying, on the scale from 1-10 of achievement whoring, I score a solid 100. As in, I'd slap the pope if there existed an achievement for it. So you can imagine how solid a game must be for me to play that has no achievements.

Enter Darkest Dungeon.

Darkest dungeon is a beautifully crafted turn based RPG taking place in a dark, Godforsaken place that SURGES with HP Lovecraft (Creator of the Cthulhu and Old Ones, mythos. The father of all things macabre and depressing. He makes Edgar Alan Poe look like Walt Disney) influence. You're the heir to an accursed mansion in an accursed town, your ancestors brought doom to the town when their curiosity and thirst for the unknown had unleashed an evil so vile that only the mad would seek to stop it. The unfortunate thing being, only the mad can stop it. The FORTUNATE thing being, the town is ripe with the mad.

Upon arriving into town, you form a band of not so merry men of varying abilities to start questing, but these men and women are human. They panic, they get scared, they doubt themselves and each other, and they can die, permanently.

When picking the randomly generated members of party from the caravan, they all have weaknesses, diseases, and unhealthy habits that affect one or several stats. A Paladin with a thirst for whores, a Plague Doctor who can potentially eat all your rations, a Bard who fears the dark; and other such randomly generated quirky questers.

Make no mistake, when you go on quests, you have very harsh decisions to make. You can die trying to complete it, you can abandon the quest, which will scar your party with the potency of defeat, further debuffing them. Or, against literally all odds, you can see the quest through, reaping the rewards, and suffering the consequences of the sacrifices you had to make to complete the task, be it the death of one or more party members (which debuffs the survivors), or the insanity and fear that accumulated from staying in the dark for too long, or running out of rations and starvation during the quest.

The dungeons are wrought with unforgiving traps, diseases, and curses that really make your life difficult if you choose to push through to the end, and more often than not, you'l find yourself heading straight back to town before you even visit the next room of the dungeon, only because you know you can't complete your quest if your Crusader has Cthulhu AIDS.

There is very little victory to be had in Darkest dungeon, and it really humbles you and makes you truly appreciate the small, and very few and far in between wins that you'll experience in this game. You must be very tactful on who to take with you and who to leave behind in the town to lick their wounds and potentially cure an acquired ailment.

The mechanics are easy enough to understand that you start to flow very smoothly between where a character must be in order to maximize his or her efficacy (Rangers in the back, warriors in the front, supports in the middle, etc.). Learning your  enemies weakness and how to exploit them oftentimes can be frustrating if you don't keep a cool head during the more trying fights. And the inventory can be a bit of a pain in the ass to manage at first.

The game is a true test of gamer mettle and it will take you to task by providing you with some of the worst ass whoopings a game can provide, and to that I say,

"Bring. It. ON!"